Critique my kitchen designer’s plan
Hey everyone. Came here a few weeks ago asking for some ideas. I got one or two. Now I’m looking for some critiques on my designer‘s plan. Overall, we like what’s going on here. I think we’ll adjust the drawers to the left of the range to a 30” double drawer base from two 15”, but otherwise we aren’t seeing anything to change at the moment, but want to see if any other good ideas come of this post.
The two full height bases next to range are 9”; one for spices and the other for sheet pans.
Some details:
frameless cabinets
33” sink base
30” pantry
15” drawer next to refrigerator
12” drawer to right of range
2 15” drawers left of range (likely to be 30” double)
30” range
36” hood
All walls are 18“ or 21”
Thanks in advance.
Comments (48)
Eric
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoRelated Discussions
Suggestions / critique my kitchen plan
Comments (17)Here is a suggestion: 1) Your front door is now on the side of the house. Like this: I would suggest getting a front door with glass panels so light can get into the hallway. Between that and the light coming down the hallway from the west-facing window in the dining room, the hallway shouldn't be dark. 2) Moving the front door allowed me to use the space a lot more efficiently and make all the rooms around the front door and the hallway more spacious without changing the overall outline of your house. It also gives people entering the house the option to spread out in different directions instead of having that bottleneck mudroom and single-file-line hallway. Someone who needs to go to the bathroom can go straight there and get out of everybody else's way. Someone who wants to drop dirty shoes in the laundry room can go straight there. Someone who just wants to put away their mud room stuff (coats, bags, etc.) can go straight down the hall and use the closets/cupboards there. And the entrance/hallway is now wide enough that multiple people can be entering and putting things away at the same time without being in each other's way. 3) I put the laundry room and the shower together. It meant you get: a) a larger shower b) more walking/moving around space in the room c) a long counter to use while doing laundry or getting ready d) the combination of the shower and sink in the same room means someone can get completely ready in the morning in here e) the ability to strip off dirty clothes and throw them in the washer and jump in the shower all in one go 4) You no longer have an awkwardly long and skinny half bath. 5) Both the shower/laundry room and the half bath now have north-facing windows, so you will have plenty of natural light in both all day. 6) You have a HUGE amount of storage on either side of the hallway. This will function as your mudroom, but it can also store china for the dining room, pantry overages for when you've done a lot of canning, extra rolls of toilet paper for the bathroom, extra things of laundry detergent, and anything else you have to put away. One side of the hallway is 24" deep for hanging coats (and anything else deep that you want to store), and the other side is 12"-18" deep (whatever you prefer) for shallow storage. You can do cubbies, shelves, whatever. A long row of shallow storage like this is the best kind of storage -- you can see everything at once and nothing gets lost in the depths of the back. 7) I swapped the locations of the kitchen and the dining room because: a) In its original location, the dining room table was quite a hike from the outdoor kitchen. Now it doesn't matter which kitchen you are using, the dining room table is right next to it. b) The original dining room location has better natural light. This is more useful in a kitchen. You don't really need excellent task lighting to eat a sandwich. Dim lighting in a dining room is often considered "mood lighting," but dim lighting in a kitchen is just bad lighting. Plus the majority of big sit-down dinners happen at night anyway when natural light is gone, after you cooked all day and could have been using the natural light in your kitchen. c) Moving the kitchen also means it now overlooks the living room, so cooks can interact with people who are just hanging out. There is some bar seating now between the kitchen and living room to facilitate those interactions. Before, the cooks could only really interact with people sitting at the dining room table, which is not where people who aren't cooking usually hang out. Usually people only come to the table when everybody is sitting down to eat, and then the cooks are no longer cooking. d) In general, it is nice not to have the kitchen be the very first thing you see when you walk in a house. 8) Inside the kitchen, you have two prep counters -- one on either side of the sink. This eliminates the second sink you were hesitant about, but it still gives you the function of a second sink because both prep areas have access the sink. One prep counter overlooks the big windows, and one overlooks the living room. Working at either should be very pleasant. 9) While still handy to the rest of the kitchen, the fridge and freezer are outside the major work zones and close to the dining area, so people can grab a snack and sit down without entering the work zones and bothering the cooks. (If you do a microwave, it should go next to the fridge for the same reason.) 10) Can the internal pillar be worked into the staircase wall? Or maybe into the end of the closet I added? I left the pillar where it was, but it'd be nice if it weren't just in the middle of everything. 11) I forgot to move the fireplace, but I am envisioning it in the living room in front of the windows like this:...See MoreCritique my kitchen plan please
Comments (76)You know....for a brief period of time in our last remodeling process, we had 2 dishwashers. It was nice in that there was almost always an empty dw waiting to be filled. But, it wasn't "all that" that I thought it might be. I found trying to load 2 dishwashers cumbersome. I had to try to jockey the contents between the 2 for the best fit, which could be time consuming. I'd get frustrated and think, "I could have washed this by hand and been done by now!" If both dw's were run at once, it seemed like a huge task to get them both emptied. My little kids, who were normally delegated to the duty of loading and unloading, could no longer do the task. It was overwhelming to them. Hey, some days it felt overwhelming to me! Then we got to planning this remodel. We planned for 2 dw's again. Cabinets needed to go in and our sink needed to come out. We moved the entire kitchen operation to the family room. We were washing dishes old-style, in dish pans on the table. One person washed, one or two dried and put away. All of a sudden, cleanup became this efficient, no big deal task (except for late night dinners when we were all tired.) "Why did we think we needed a dishwasher?" we contemplated for the first few weeks. Well, that style of cleaning lost its newness, and we came to the point we'd be glad to have a dw to stick stuff in and walk away, but we still enjoyed the camaraderie of working together. Pretty soon it was time to install the sink and counters in the new kitchen. We only had one dw in our possession. We started the process of looking around for a second one while we used the one we had. Life went on. We were functioning fine with one dw, usually running it a couple of times per day. It meant we had to hand wash some stuff, but a lot of these items were over-sized to match our big family, or they were hand washables anyway. It also meant the dish draining rack took up permanent residence on our counter. The hole for the second dw was "temporarily" filled with our trash and recycling bins. We love the convenience of tossing the trash and recyclables in their containers right next to the sink where we are processing them. We came to the conclusion that we are just fine with one dw. It loads and unloads quickly and easily. We wash the hand washing stuff with little fuss. I'm not crazy about the dishes drying on the counter, but it's a kitchen and that's part of what kitchens are for. Our kitchen is medium sized, and the storage is more valuable to me at this point that the second DW. We plan to do a pull-out in the 2' opening. If we change our minds later, a DW can still go in there. You may feel differently. Som families even half our size love having 2 DW's. I liked having 2, but it wasn't as slick of a process as I thought it would be....See MoreCritique my Kitchen Lighting Plan Please!
Comments (16)I've almost finalized my lighting. I went back to the lighting store and they advised me that these are the wall wash trims that they have: https://www.amazon.com/Recessed-992P-4-Inch-Scoop-Baffle/dp/B0039PFKEO These trims have a black baffle but they can order trims with a white baffle. I asked what the difference is, and they thought it would not change the appearance of the light. I'm not sure if I should take the black ones, or special order the white ones. The white will blend in with the ceiling better, so what would be the advantage of the black? I'm going to stick with the 4" HALO lights that I originally chose due to the low cost and the fact that the color temperature can be changed. They are inexpensive enough that they can be changed in the future if we (or a future owner) are unhappy with them. After looking at the rendering of the kitchen, I see that they are placed very close to the crown molding on the upper cabinets, so I will need to move them out a little bit, but still not directly over the edge of the countertop. How close is too close to the crown molding? Finally, I checked e-bay, and I can purchase another semi-flushmount light to match the other 2 fixtures that I have already purchased. When I look at the rendering, it looks a little crowded with the additional fixture. The hanging fixture over the table is 17" diameter and the semi-flushmount are 16" diameter each. They can use up to 100 watt bulbs, so I can probably go with ~1100 lumen bulbs which would provide more light per fixture, but adding another fixture will provide an overlap of light, whereas increasing the lumens will not. Here is an updated plan with the extra light fixture added. I'm really torn on this because as RL said above, once the cabinets are in, I will only have a ceiling space of 10 x 10....See MoreCritique My Kitchen Plan
Comments (7)Thanks for your comments so far! @ HU-924188966 While one could go under the hob, I love having pot/pan drawers under the hob, and putting a 30" oven under a 36" hob requires 3" of filler on either side, which wastes precious space. It's certainly possible, but a trade-off. @ chicagoans I'm not a fan of the range for this kitchen. We often have a lot of pots/pans going at once, including a very large cast iron pan, and need the 36" of cooktop real-estate. We also really want induction, and are pretty set on the Thermador Freedom cooktop. Wanting the features of the Freedom cooktop locks us into not having a range, and also 36" ovens I find impractical - they take forever to heat up, often don't heat evenly and I've never needed that much width. @ HU-918119203 It's a very interesting house that has had many lives - at one point it was divided into two apartments (the vestiges of a second kitchen are still on the main floor. I've attached some site photos. We've been there 5 years and finally ready to start fixing its problems. I hear you on the peninsula location regarding the views. However, cooking is a well-loved hobby for us, and being able to see out while cooking seemed more of a priority than during the few moments of eating breakfast, and it's nice for people to be able to sit/hang out/interact with the cooks without being in the cooking space. If we made the kitchen a small enough U to allow for a banquet, the sink ends up in a corner and its's not really a two-cook kitchen. We currently have a 48" wolf open-burner range that came with the house. My issues with the 48" range are that the main oven is unnecessarily wide, and the second oven is uselessly small. The only thing I've ever been able to fit in in is a Pullman pan for making Rugbrød. I also don't need 8 burners, would never use a grill or griddle, and neither want to pay for, nor have room for, a range hood that wide. I've really wrestled with it, as I hate the idea of getting rid of a perfectly good, very expensive range that many people dream of having....See MoreEric
3 years ago
PROMDLN
3 years agoRather than "2 15” drawers left of range (likely to be 30” double)," would do one 30" drawer base cab.
Would put drawers (not roll out shelves) at base of pantry cabinet - pic below.
Eric thanked MDLNEric
3 years agoEric
3 years agolast modified: 3 years ago- PRO
MDLN
3 years agolast modified: 3 years ago Eric
3 years agoEric
3 years agoEric
3 years agodi3h1s
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoEric
3 years agoEric
3 years agoEric
3 years agoNewideas
3 years agoDepending on your ceiling height and how tall you are, you can put your cookie sheets above the fridge in vertical storage. I agree w earlier poster that countertop convection oven perfect for second oven. That is what we used for years.
Eric thanked Newideas
Eric thanked decoenthusiasteEric
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agodecoenthusiaste
3 years agoIf you could tuck something like this in somewhere, I always envisioned the slots for baking/cookie sheets. You don't have a column of stacking ovens/micro, but this cabinet would be great right at the side of that.
Here's a variation of the same type of cabinet. Pretty slim; maybe by the window right of the fridge and that cabinet.
Eric thanked decoenthusiasteEric
3 years agoEric
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoEric
3 years ago
David Jones
3 years agodi3h1s
3 years agoaziline
3 years agodecoenthusiaste
3 years agoThis might be a more efficient pantry solution than the double cabinet right of the fridge.
The Social Kitchen · More InfoAnd drawers are always the best option for more accessible storage.
Rockville, Maryland Kitchen Remodel · More InfoIf those are pullouts for oil/spice storage flanking the range, you'll shorten the life of your supplies when near the heat source like that.
Pantry options · More InfoA utensil pullout would be better. Could also do one for baking sheets on the other side.
Amherst Kitchen pull-outs · More InfoEmily R.
3 years agoEric
3 years agoEric
3 years agoEric
3 years agolast modified: 3 years ago@cpartist - thanks for your input! this allows us to adjust the island to make it far more functional for us - Will be: on front side, a 30 inch wide full height double door 12" deep cabinet in center, flanked by two 18" wide x 18" deep full height cabinets. On back side, 30" microwave cabinet flanked by two 18" wide x 18" deep full height cabinets to allow for storage of of things like our crock pots, ninja foodie, mixer, etc. Makes the island symmetrical and pleasing to the eye as well. Microwave will be one of those combo microwave/convection ovens to give us a pseudo 2nd oven.
Updated drawing. Definitely the route we’re going after seeing all the options. This one is pleasing to the eye.
Also, designers quote on cabinets came in higher than we can stomach for the door style we want. This has made me have to seek other options. At current, I'm leaning strongly toward Barker cabinets. The clear coated walnut is beautiful and the quote, all-in, was just at $10k. And probably significantly better quality than the Merillat Classic which was the current option.
I sincerely thank everyone for their input. This kitchen is exactly what we hoped for - and I think it's making the most of a smaller space.Eric
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoWe've also narrowed down the color options, too.
We've settled on one of these two floors and cabinets will depend on which floor and style we're going to end up going for. I have never been a fan of oak flooring until I saw the French oak flooring below, which I absolutely love. My wife wants to go with the natural hickory again... I'm all about changing it up... but painted cabinets with littles stresses me out, too. Anyway, interested to hear your thoughts. Both floors are random width 3,4,5".
First option:
This floor: Chelsea wire brushed natural hickory - "Grand Mesa"
With one of these cabinet options. One is clear coated Walnut, will have to call on the other.Clear coat Walnut
Like this color, too, and this is more like the cabinet door we're going with. Just not sure what the color is. Likely one of their stained options.
Second Option:This floor: Chelsea wire brushed "French Oak"
Paired with painted cabinets, much like these. However, island, if not white, would more likely be a deep blue or something other than a turquoise like the picture.
A little information... we're a full brick ranch on 3 acres. Not a modern house, more of a contemporary... vaulted ceilings in great room, with open kitchen. Rustic/country probably suits the house a bit better given the setting, but I like the cleanliness of the bottom picture.Michelle
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoThe updated design is so much more functional. We remodeled 20 years ago, putting drawers on either side of the range and have never regretted it. We have cherry cabinets and a painted island because we wanted a pop of color that we could easily change or repaint if needed. Both have held up pretty well to 15+ years of a growing up family. A couple of questions/comments regarding your island. How much seating will your island have? What will you store in the island? Will there be electrical outlets? Our island is where everything happens. Food prep, serving and eating, morning coffee, homework and amazing conversations. As such, we have lighting over the island, electrical outlets on the side, 2 shallow drawers for spices, knives, food scale and deeper drawers for flour, sugar, etc., all within reach since we do 98% of all food prep at the island. The other thing about my island is the lowest deep drawer is opposite the dishwasher. When my kids were little we put their plastic cups and dishes in that drawer so they could get their own drinks, snacks, etc. When they got older, but not tall enough to reach the upper cabinets, we moved all the dishes to that drawer so they could easily empty the dishwasher, which was one of their daily chores. We still have the dishes in that drawer because it is so easy to empty the dishwasher. (see below) I had no idea how integral the island would be in our everyday life but the only thing I would change about it is to add more seating. I encourage you to consider how you might use yours.
S G
2 years agoEric,
I was reading g your old thread. I am looking to update my gallery kitchen and liked some of your plan ideas. Would you mind sharing an updated version / pics of what you did and are you happy ? Advice / opinion ?
I can attach my pics which is custom kitchen with high end cabinetry but dated.
Shannon_WI